I slump back against the wall, my heart in pieces.
We’re both crying now, quiet sniffs punctuating the silence of her kitchen. I finally brave my voice, which is every bit as weak and shaky as I feel. “I don’t even know what to say. I know sorry isn’t enough. I don’t know what would be. I don’t know how I could ever believe…”
She picks up where I trail off, stepping closer. “They made you believe. You b-believed these people and all the b-bullshit they fed you, Chloe. Maybe not as much as the others, but they had you.”
I repress a shudder, still revolted by the idea of those words on my lips. Maggie isn’t looking for me to talk yet though. She looks right past me to the back door where Adam is still waiting. I see his hard profile in the moonlight, his sharp jaw and thin nose.
“They had him too.”
***
I step outside and he turns to me. He is prettier than a boy has any right to be and far too beautiful for the ugly things he’s done.
“I don’t trust you,” I say.
He doesn’t look at me, but he flinches like it stings. But also in a way that tells me he gets it.
“It doesn’t change the fact that I want to help,” he says.
“Maybe I don’t want your help.”
Adam turns toward me then, his expression stony. “Then I’ll go to the police and tell them everything I know.”
“What?”
“You heard me.”
I feel fury under my skin, heating me up despite the snow. “If you do that, we have nothing. We might never find the evidence I had.”
Adam shrugs and I feel my jaw clench.
“It’d be my word against Daniel Tanner’s, Adam! Do you understand that the only proof I have was stolen from a recent murder victim? He’d come through this smelling like a rose, and I’d probably look like the killer!”
“I don’t care.”
“You don’t care? You don’t care about the possibility of me being a murder suspect?”
“That’s right, I don’t! Because you’d be alive! If I go to the police, they’ll launch an investigation and you will be watched. Protected. He’d be too smart to come after you then because it would lead a trail of bread crumbs back to the study group and eventually to him.”
“So you’d let him get away with what they did to Julien? You’d just walk away?”
He closes in on me, his head bending down until his face is lost in shadow. His hand reaches for my cheek, and I hold my breath. When he speaks again, his voice is so low I can feel it as much as I can hear it. “You have no idea what I’d do to keep you safe, do you?”
The back door opens, and Maggie lets herself out. I’m half irritated when I turn to her, but the look on her face shuts my mouth. Her skin is pale and her eyes are wet. Too wet.
“What’s wrong?” I ask her.
“Look,” she says, pointing blindly back to the house. Her laptop is open on the kitchen counter. “I was j-just checking my stuff, and—”
“And what?” Adam asks. He moves his head, like he wants to see the screen. “Are they looking for us?”
Maggie shakes her head, and I see that her cheeks are wet. She’s crying. I reach for her hands. She’s cold. Shaking. “What is it, Mags?”
“It’s Julien. She’s d-dead.”
***
The bright future of a former local honor roll student was cut tragically short when she took her own life—
I stop reading. I’ve already read the post a half dozen times. We all have. I don’t know why. Maybe we think reading it over and over again might make it untrue.
But it is true. Julien is dead. Mrs. Campbell found her hanging in her bedroom two days ago.
I try to think of Julien dead, but the truth is, I don’t really know what death looks like unless you count my glimpse of Dr. Kirkpatrick. I mean, I saw my grandpa Frank at his visitation, but I was eight and all I remember thinking is that he looked kind of orange and that he probably wouldn’t really like the lacy satin pillow under his head.
But he was old and Julien isn’t.
Wasn’t.
God, this just shouldn’t be possible. I’m pretty sure I should feel something other than this. Because I don’t feel anything. I’m just…numb.
Adam lets out a low sigh and pushes his fingers into his hair. Maggie sniffs into a tissue, and I wince. Her crumpled face makes me ache, but is that for Julien or for Maggie?
And what about Mrs. Miller? I remember her so vividly, her soft hands closing around the bag of maple nut clusters. Her tired eyes and perfect smile. She found Julien.
She found her daughter hanging in her room.
“We need to do something,” I say. Not that I really have any ideas. I had to say something though. Because I can’t think about Mrs. Miller. Not for one more second.
“L-like what?” Maggie asks.
“We can’t bring her back,” Adam says. He too looks shaken. Stunned.
And I’m still sitting here, cold and hard like a stone while, somewhere in California, Julien is dead. She killed herself, and it wasn’t because of a bully or a bad breakup. It wasn’t anything stupid or childish. It was because of Daniel Tanner.
“We can’t let him get away with this,” I say.
“No,” Maggie says, and her eyes go flinty.
“How?” Adam sits back in his chair, shoulders slumped. “I’ll do whatever you want. You know that. I’ll do anything. But we don’t have proof.”
“I do have proof!” I say, and then I wince. “I did. I had it before.”
“Do you remember anything?” he asks.
Swirling snow. My tires slipping on the pavement. Dirt crusted on my half-frozen fingers. I remember so much. And nowhere near enough.
I shake my head, and Maggie touches my hand. “It’s okay.”
“No, it’s not okay. I need to figure it out.”
“It’s locked somewhere in your head,” Adam says. “It’s not like you can just force something like that out.”
I don’t say anything, but I know he’s wrong. They’ve already forced my mind to forget things. And if they can do that…
“Let’s go,” I say, standing up.
“W-what? Where are we going?”
“We’re going back to the school.”
“Why? What for?” Adam asks, though he stands up with me.
I know what I have to do. It scares me to death, the idea of someone poking around in my head for the second time. But I can’t let this rest. I have to try.
I push down my fear and square my shoulders. “What do you guys know about hypnosis?”
***
We decide to meet at the school. Mags needs to check in with her mom, who’s still at the bakery, and I need to pick up a couple of reference books from home, including the one I checked out of the library. I don’t know why I have Adam drive me, because I don’t exactly trust him. But the world still feels steadier when he’s close.
I’m grateful that I don’t need to explain this to Maggie, who watches us from her front window as we drive away.
Adam tunes the radio to a station playing Christmas carols, and I stare out the window. Houses draped in pine swags and twinkle lights drift past. For a moment, I can almost pretend this is a date. That we’re two normal people, stretching out the last bit of a perfect evening.
“It’s different now,” I say, maybe to remind myself more than anything.
“Maybe,” he says. “But it doesn’t change anything. Not for me.”
He pulls to a stop at the curb beside my driveway, and then he comes around to my side of the car, and everything’s just like it was before. Except we don’t touch. We don’t hold hands or sling arms around each other’s shoulders. We just walk side by side, crunching up the snowy sidewalk until we’re at the foot of my porch steps.
“Chloe,” Adam says, moving in front of me.
I suddenly feel like I’ve run a marathon. Breathless and light-headed, I can’t seem to do a thing but watch him as he slides his hands to my face. “I’m a liar and a thief and thousand other shitty things, but I would never hurt you. I need you to know that.”